Restaurants and group dining facilities provide in the course of an evening a very large number of glasses of iced water or other iced drinks. There have long been recognized problems with the typical methods utilized to distribute ice, or fluent drink matter, or both to the large volume of glasses. Thus, inventors have sought over the years to alleviate some of these problems. A good example of some problems sought to be addressed by these inventors is clearly described in the specification of U.S. Pat. #3,987,824: "In most restaurants, empty glasses are stocked at a serving station which has an ice cube bin and a water distributing nozzle and the glasses are filled individually by the waiters or waitresses as needed. While this system in general is satisfactory for low volume operations, it presents several problems in busier operations, particularly during peak periods. One obvious draw-back is that a certain amount of time is required to put ice cubes into a glass and then subsequently fill the glass with water. Where this task must be repeated for each individual glass to be filled, a substantial amount of busy waitress' time can be consumed. The second problem is one of sanitation in that, when pressed for time, the person filling the glass will frequently dip the glass into the ice cube bin, rather than using the ice cube scoop, thus brushing their hands through cubes in the bin." The above described problems in restaurants, as well as hotels, sports arenas, convention centers, and other public areas has as expressed above, been addressed by other inventors. Two known examples of the prior art solutions to these problems are seen in U.S. Pat. #3,181,739 and #3,987,824.
Also, in U.S. Pat. #3,566,929, Mead, the preferred use of cited patent requires a drink receptacle of specific proportion to facilitate proper function. It is the specific advantage of the invention herein disclosed to accommodate receptacles of all proportions and designs. Any drink receptacle which could be maintained in an industry standard dishwashing rack can be properly accessed by the embodiment of the invention disclosed herein.
As noted by studying the above cited patents, the prior art solutions to the ice distribution problem have jumped from the simplicity of the ice bin and scoop process to the complexity of rather cumbersome assemblies which are relatively expensive, have potentially troublesome working parts, consume counter space within the kitchen facility, and include numerous covered or otherwise hard to clean edges and parts.